M&A Science Live - Using AI in M&A: A Deal Lawyer's Take on Prompts, Governance, and What Not to Automate
Nobody's asking the harder question: if AI is drafting your purchase agreement markup and summarizing your diligence, who's accountable when it gets something wrong?
Aaron Binstock has seen both sides. As a Partner at Cooley LLP, he's worked on transactions from sub-million dollar deals to $7B+ exits — and he's been inside Cooley's push to actually build AI into legal practice, not just pilot it and move on. He ran the Innovation Cup that surfaced their real-world use cases. He's watched a tax partner catch an AI error that would have cost a client seven figures. And he's had to build governance protocols for the clients who specifically opt out of AI use.
This is a working session on what's actually happening at the deal table right now. We'll get into the prompts that work, the ones that blow up, where Buyer-Led M&A™ meets the new reality of AI-assisted diligence, and what the buyer's job looks like when the markup draft arrives in seconds instead of days.
Live Q&A at the end — bring your deal questions.
What You'll Learn
Where AI fits in buy-side deal execution right now — and the specific stages where it creates more risk than it removes
How to build prompts that actually work for deal work, based on what Cooley's team has tested in live transactions
What Cooley's Innovation Cup surfaced about real practitioner use cases versus the ones that sound good in demos
How to structure AI governance on a deal — including what happens operationally when your client opts out entirely
Why human review is non-negotiable — the story of a million-dollar error that an AI missed and a tax partner caught
What buyers need to own when AI-generated analysis is driving the diligence agenda before the LOI
Where the lawyer's judgment still can't be replaced — and what that means for how deal teams should be structured
Who Should Attend
Corp dev leaders, GCs, deal lawyers, and strategy teams who are already using or planning to use AI in their deal process and want a clear-eyed view of where it helps and where it doesn't.
Speaker Bios
Kison Patel – Founder, M&A Science | Chairman, DealRoom
Kison built DealRoom to ~$10M ARR and has led M&A execution across hundreds of transactions. He founded M&A Science to extract and share the patterns strong buyers use to win deals, turning practitioner experience into searchable, reusable intelligence.
Aaron Binstock - Partner at Cooley LLP
Aaron focuses on M&A and complex corporate transactions across tech, cybersecurity, AI, and SaaS. He's advised boards, GCs, and executive teams on transactions ranging from under a million to over seven billion dollars. Cooley has been one of the most active early adopters of AI in legal services, and Aaron has been in the middle of that shift — not just adopting the tools, but building the internal processes for how they actually get used on deals. He brings the perspective of someone who's seen what AI gets right, what it gets wrong, and what it means for the practitioners on both sides of the table.
Member Access
M&A Science members get:
Full session recording access inside the Membership library
Session takeaways (key insights organized for practitioners)
Access to the broader M&A Science member library (plays, templates, and real-world frameworks)
If you want access: Become an M&A Scientist. Join the community of the best practitioners in M&A.
→ Membership: $1995/year → mascience.com/membership
FAQs
Will this session be recorded?
Yes. The recording will be available in DealPilot, powered by M&A Science, for members. Non-members can register to attend live.
What if I can't attend live?
Register anyway. The recording will be available through DealPilot. DealPilot members get access before public release.
What is DealPilot, powered by M&A Science?
DealPilot, powered by M&A Science, is the deal guidance layer for buy-side teams — practitioner-built playbooks, frameworks, certification programs, and primary source intelligence from 400+ practitioners who have actually run the deals. $1995/year at mascience.com/membership.